Theatre
A Doll's House
Et dukkehjem
Henrik Ibsen · 1879
Synopsis
Just before Christmas, Nora Helmer comes home from shopping laden with presents; her husband Torvald, who treats her like a child, has just been promoted to bank manager. An old friend, Kristine Linde, comes looking for work. Nora confides in her that she once secretly borrowed money, forging her father's signature, for the journey that saved Torvald's life. But the lender, Krogstad, an employee of the bank whom Torvald wants to dismiss, discovers the forgery and threatens to reveal it.
Context
The first notes, dated from Rome on 19 October 1878, are titled “Notes for the contemporary tragedy”; the fair copy was sent from Amalfi in September 1879, according to the Ibsen Centre of the University of Oslo. The play appeared in Copenhagen on 4 December 1879, in a print run of eight thousand copies that sold out in less than a month, and was first performed at the Royal Theatre on 21 December. Ibsen knew of the case of his friend Laura Kieler, who had secretly borrowed money to care for her husband. For the German stage, he himself wrote another ending, which he called a barbaric outrage.
Who it is for
A play in prose and in three acts, lasting one evening, which reads as well as it plays, and a good way into Ibsen's theatre.
Prizes and reception
The most performed play in the world in 2006; Ibsen's manuscripts were inscribed in 2001 on the Memory of the World register.